This is a Second Continuation In Part (C.I.P. No. 2) of a present Patent Pending whose filing date was Mar. 18, 1998, whose Ser. No. is 09/040,550, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,353, and whose First Continuation In Part (C.I.P. No. 1) was submitted to the PTO on Jun. 2, 1999.
Throughout the 1990s the computers that millions of people now use worldwide have improved at an amazingly rapid rate, to the point that the power and mobility these devices now have is truly breathtaking. In particular, the amount of work they can do has greatly increased while at the same time their size has greatly decreased, the latter to the point that today a capacious and multifunctional computer can be made that is no bigger than a common videocassette. But such devices have one major limitation: their keyboard keys are presently so small and close together that it is impossible to enter data into them at typical secretarial speed for any length of time. Indeed, in February 1998 one research manager for a major computer maker (Celeste Baranaski of Hewlett-Packard) said: "Unless some breakthrough is made in keyboard technology, many of these smaller travel keyboards just won't work." And in that same month a journalist (David MacNeill of Pen Computing Magazine) said of present palmtop computers that their "Inappropriate input methods, such as tiny QWERTY keyboards, hobble us in our attempt to enter our information into a device, wasting our time, and even causing physical pain." Indeed, even a slight reduction in a keyboard's width may significantly reduce a typist's speed--as then the keys are arranged differently than the spacing at which one may be accustomed to typing.
However, a few inventors have long been aware of this potential deficit of typewriters, computers, laptops, palmtops, calculators, and other alphanumeric/operational input devices that are designed with versatility and mobility in mind. For example, in 1974 George Margolin in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,940,758 described an EXPANDABLE KEYBOARD FOR ELECTRONIC POCKET CALCULATORS AND THE LIKE, in which "a keyboard of familiar layout for a full-size desk top data terminal is organized in three modular portions," which when closed its three modular portions are arranged in a stacked position as shown in FIG. 7 of Margolin's Patent. But it is obvious that Margolin's invention, while reducing the surface or `footprint` area occupied by a standard desktop keyboard by about two-thirds, does so at a sacrifice of triply increasing the keyboard's depth, so that such a device could hardly be carried like a videocassette in one's pocket or purse. Then in 1991 Adrian Crissan in his U.S. Pat. No. 5,187,644 described a COMPACT PORTABLE COMPUTER HAVING AN EXPANDABLE FULL SIZE KEYBOARD WITH EXTENDIBLE SUPPORTS, in which the outer quarters of his keyboard comprise "a pair of fold-out flaps containing a portion of the keys" which can be rotated upward and inward so that when closed said outer quarters lay flat upon the middle half of the keyboard. But this arrangement also considerably increases the invention's depth by the thickness of its folded-over portions, as is obvious from examination of FIG. 1 of Crissan's Patent. A further deficit of Margolin's and Crissan's inventions is that when their keyboards's outer portions are folded onto their central portions, all the keys are concealed so they cannot be used when their keyboards are thusly closed. A number of other patented keyboards, especially U.S. Pat. No. 5,141,343 to Roylance for a COMPRESSIBLE/EXPANDABLE KEYBOARD WITH ADJUSTABLE KEY SPACING, U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,307 to Karidis et al for a KEYBOARD WITH BIASED MOVABLE KEYBOARD SECTIONS, U.S. Pat. No. 5,543,787 to Karidis et al for a KEYBOARD WITH TRANSLATING SECTIONS, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,870,034 to Wood for a COMPACT COMPUTING DEVICE WITH COMPRESSIBLE KEYBOARD (see also Classes 400/88 and 400/682) have keys arranged that close upward, downward, or sideward in various ways, but none of them simultaneously allow the parent system to (a) reduce its width by as much as 40 percent without compromising any other dimensional aspect and (b) operate in both open and closed positions as does the Disclosed Invention.